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Some questions regarding horse limbs movement

Hi all,

I've the Joe Weatherly and Goldfinger animal books but I'm still quite confused about the limits of the horse's limbs movement (Goldfinger's anamtomy book didn't mention much on this).
Below is my image:

I haven't studied a lot of horse anatomy to be honest so I can't say for certain, but my understanding is that there is more movement able to be done than you have indicated. I also am not sure if it is best to think of the scapula humerus joint as ball and socket since it's movement is really just like that of a hinge joint (pretty much all the horse's joints are hinge, they have very limited movement in other directions and no real supination or pronation). Don't forget too that the entire scapula (as with humans) can slide and rotate freely (and the lack of a collarbone I think gives it more range of motion).

Try just drawing on top in photoshop or whatever where the bones lie beneath it. You can do the same thing with screenshots of videos of horses running. This is probably the best way to get a good understanding of the range of motion of the limbs and bones.

EDIT: Also worth picking up is a copy of Ken Hultgren's The Art of Animal Drawing. He touches lightly on anatomy, but mostly in a simplified skeleton kind of way. The real core of his book is on good simplifications of forms and capturing movement/gesture, and the book is geared a little towards animators (as he was one), so shows a few cycles of legs and stuff and how they can move. Really useful stuff, and this book will probably teach you way more about drawing horses than studying all the intricacies of individual muscles and overthinking exactly how much a single joint can bend or not bend. Remember too that slight exaggerations are okay to make an image better, for example Heinrich Kley was an AMAZING artist and often drew some magnificent horses, but he occasionally did things like give them impossible twists to their spines because it would help the image or gesture (horse spines are pretty much fused together).

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." -- Bruce Lee

The Following User Says Thank You to Cadaure For This Useful Post:

Wow, tks a lot guys! After watching the video with the skeleton markings on the horse, I guess it can be said that the humerus can't go forward much, if at all. Always confused about this part especially since this bone is "hidden" within the torso, unlike humans. (thanks Medelo! )